Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Learning history by doing history. Introduction to a historical problem, and learning how to build and defend a historical interpretation through the analysis of primary and secondary sources. Small seminar format will allow hands-on experience developing research, writing, and presentation skills applicable to other history courses. Breadth-Humanities/Social Sciences.

COURSE DETAILS:

Dam it! Who holds the power in Canada’s hydroelectric development?
In 2014, the Cristy Clark government in BC approved the development of the Site C Dam on the Peace River.  Supporters hailed the initiative for its potential to create clean, renewable energy; but opponents pointed to less salubrious impacts of hydroelectric development on the ecosystem.

Site C Dam is actually a recent extension of a large-scale hydroelectric project on the Peace and Columbia Rivers initiated by W.A.C. Bennett’s government in the 1960s.  At that same time, on the other side of the country, the Churchill Falls hydroelectric development was launched in Newfoundland and Labrador by the government of J.R. Smallwood.  Both mega-projects were introduced with fanfare and with minimal public discussion of the risks involved or consultation with those adversely affected. They were emblematic of high-modernism in Canada: an overwhelming belief in science and technology as a means to create progress, industry, and employment in the postwar world.  Both were increasingly challenged by environmentalists and Indigenous activists, who raised concerns about the flooding of lands and displacement of Indigenous people, farmers, and other local residents; the environmental impacts of such largescale interventions on local flora and fauna; and the build-up of toxins and sediments that accompanies the damming of major rivers.

In this course, we will engage with the methods of social history, Indigenous history, and environmental history to investigate the development and contestation of the hydroelectric projects on the Churchill and Peace rivers.  We will explore how and why high-modernism became a powerful cultural force in the second half of the 20^th century. We will attempt to balance the positive and negative impacts of such developments. And we will ask how ordinary Canadians have been complicit in increasing demand for hydroelectricity, given that alternative sources of electricity (e.g., nuclear, wind, geothermal) are still nowhere near being able to meet that demand.  What are we willing to give up or trade off to square the circle?

In this course, students will participate in class discussions, work with primary and secondary sources, and create annotated bibliographies, outlines, and thesis statements in preparation for writing a well conceived, historically grounded, and thoughtfully argued position paper on the building of generating stations at ONE of the more recent expansions of these projects: Site C Dam on the Peace River or Muskrat Falls on the Lower Churchill River.

 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: